H. S. Bhabra

Hargurchet Singh Bhabra (June 7, 1955 - June 1, 2000) was a British Asian writer and broadcaster who settled in Canada.

Bhabra was born in Mumbai, India and moved to England with his family in 1957. The family eventually settled in Beare Green, Surrey. From from 1966 to 1973, Bhabra attended Reigate Grammar School. He was the only boy of Asian origin in the school, was highly regarded by his teachers, and an accomplished actor in school productions such as "Much Ado about Nothing". Regarded by his teachers as the most exceptional member of an exceptional year,fact|date=March 2007 he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford where he studied English Literature.

Publication

Bhabra worked for six years in international banking in the City of London. In 1984, he resigned to complete "Gestures", a novel on which he had been working for years. He travelled and worked as a correspondent for a few years, which provided material for his career as a writer of fiction, under his own name and also as A M Kabal and John Ford. "Gestures" won a Betty Trask Award in 1987. It has been described thus: "With extraordinary force and subtlety, Gestures conducts the 'funeral rite over an entire way of life. . . a liberal, human, European culture which has finally disappeared'. The lines could stand as an epitaph for Bhabra himself. Infused with his own erudition, elegance and empathy, it was also - and to a great degree - an expression of his own sense of displacement."fact|date=March 2007 Indeed, although he published in quick succession three thrillers — "The Adversary" (1986) and "Bad Money" (1987), and "Zero Yield" — the next few years were spent largely on travels to Egypt, Mexico and Latin America.

The United States

In 1989, Bhabra was awarded the first Fulbright Chandler Fellowship in Spy and Detective Fiction Writing. This prize included a post as writer-in-residence at the University of California, Los Angeles for one year. Bhabra stayed on in Los Angeles from 1991 to 1993, hoping to earn money as a scriptwriter. That did not work out, however, though his fund of esoteric knowledge did help him win a handsome sum as a contestant on a television quiz show, "Jeopardy", an accomplishment of which he remained proud. While there, he also developed an obsession with climbing bridges, which led to his arrest while making an assault on the Golden Gate, San Francisco. Bhabra also taught at Amherst College in Massachusetts.

Canada

In 1994 Bhabra joined his parents in Toronto, the city to which they had moved after the retirement of his father. In Canada, Bhabra was perceived as an Asian-Canadian writer and broadcaster. He taught at the Humber School for Writers at Humber College and then joined TVOntario where he held several positions including host of the book program "Imprint" in 1997. Knowledgeable and intelligent, Bhabra's interests ranged from food and fashion to films and books. He later became the show's producer, but left it in 1999 as a result of artistic differences with his co-host. After leaving TVOntario in 1999, Bhabra experienced financial difficulties, and debilitating writer's block.

The next year was hard financially, and Bhabra struggled to make ends meet with occasional freelance television and magazine work. He was sustained by the support of his partner, Vee Ledson, daughter of educator Sidney Ledson. Bhabra had encouraged Ledson to pursue her dream of running her own school, Laurel Academy, which she established in Toronto in 1995. The rest of the time he concentrated on plans for an ambitious fiction trilogy: plans which ultimately came to nothing.

On 1 June 2000, a week before his 45th birthday, he killed himself by jumping off the Prince Edward Viaduct on Toronto's Bloor Street. His death contributed to the argument for the Luminous Veil, a suicide barrier fence over the viaduct. In 2003, the Luminous Veil was finally completed and in the same year "Gestures" was reprinted.

Bibliography

*"Gestures" - 1986
*"The Adversary" - 1986 (as A.M. Kabal)
*"Bad Money" - 1987 (as A.M. Kabal)
*"Zero Yield" (as John Ford)

References

* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20000627/ai_n14310264 Obituary] (from "The Independent" (London), 27 June, 2000, by Max Eilenberg
* [http://www.reigategrammar.org/ora2/form_lists/1974class_of.pdf#search=%22Hargurchet%20Bhabra%22 Reigate Grammar School]

External links

*http://brannan.org/2000/bhabra.html
*http://www.ryerson.ca/library/events/asian_heritage/bhabra.html
*http://members.shaw.ca/curtis.cathy/lastexit.htm
*http://www.rediff.com/us/2000/jun/07us2.htm
*http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/2001/minutes/committees/wks/wks010221.pdf